When analyzing a quality issue, causes of product shortfall can be in worker motivation and ability, in quality of the raw materials, in the process design or some combination of these.
Question: Would paying K-12 teachers more raise student achievement test scores? Answer: Yes or No, it depends on who you ask. See this Yahoo News article for a discussion of the teacher pay issue.
It is apparently true that nations with higher test scores pay their teachers more, relative to the nation's average wage. What isn't clear is the cause-and-effect relationship, if any.
Perhaps high-scoring nations are willing to pay more because their teachers accomplish more. Perhaps such nations attract more capable individuals into teaching because of higher pay. And just maybe there is no relationship whatsoever; coincidences do occur.
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COTTonLINE would ask you to consider how much of the poor performance of public schools is a result of the raw materials, the students. Students from one parent homes, from non-English speaking homes, from homes where nobody cares what the child does in or out of school, make up a large proportion of the public school population.Such students very often accomplish little in school, and pull down the school's test scores. Public schools serving this student population fill more of a warehousing function than an educational one. Can outstanding teachers create great learning outcomes in this setting? Rarely.
Increasingly parents who care about their children's schooling are finding the wherewithal to afford private schools or are home schooling. Private schools often get superior results while paying teachers less, on average, than public schools.
